Telework: The First Step to Offshoring Your Job

If you are working in a position that offers telecommuting, beware! Any job that can be done by telecommuting can easily be outsourced or offshored. Telecommuting is a work arrangement where the employee is located off-site but connected to the office by internet and telephone. If you think about it, there isn't a whole lot of difference between directly employing a teleworker and paying a contractor to perform the same task.

Outsourcing is the contracting of work to an outside firm. By contracting out this work, employers save themselves the hassle and expense of having an employee. Examples of costs include specialized equipment, social security taxes, renting office space, and paying for workers compensation insurance. Since the late 1990's, there has been an increasing trend for outsourcing firms to locate overseas in countries like India, Malaysia, China, or Eastern Europe.

A telecommuting position requires the worker to have access to the internet. Just about every corner of the globe has access to the internet, and email travels around the globe just as quickly as it travels across town. Telecommuters usually have to stay connected to the office and the company's customers by telephone. Thanks to the proliferation of fiber-optic communications, phone calls to India only cost a few cents more per minute than a domestic phone call. Coupled with the fact that English is an official language of India, a telephone-heavy job can be accomplished in Bangalore as effectively as in Boulder.

American telecommuters are afforded workplace protections like minimum wage laws and overtime rules. Other countries do not offer similar protections. This means that your overseas counterparts can be forced to work longer hours for less pay than you. This isn't a winning combination for a telecommuting worker. It is only a matter of time before your company discovers the cost savings of farming your work out to a domestic or international outsourcing firm.

Telecommuting means that your boss has less face time with you-he can't observe you working or have much of a personal relationship with you. When a company reorganization or downsizing comes up, guess whose job will be first on the chopping block? The worker who he can't see and doesn't know!

There is nothing wrong with a company setting itself up for occasional telework. Companies may install remote access to its network, call forwarding, or purchase laptop computers and blackberries. This allows its employees maximum flexibility to work a day or two a month from home. It also forces the employer to become better connected technologically, which enhances the efficiency of workers who are travelling or working off-site with a client.

Be careful about asking to become a full-time telework employee. You may be setting yourself up for disappointment when your company sends your job overseas.